Sanctuaries for PS2

[Rivenshield]

Originally Posted by Rockit

I think a lot of it gets back to their comments early on about wanting to have every square inch of land contestable. Obviously sancs don't come anywhere close to being in that conversation

Of course it does. If everything is contestable, it is possible to shove the enemy completely off the battlefield. That implies you have somewhere to shove them *to.*

And as far as the Five Minute Wait goes, that's about how freaking long it takes me to find a good battle anyway. I see some flashing hexes and a little flame marker on a base, and I mouse over it, and it tells me NO ENEMIES DETECTED. When I finally find some ENEMY PLATOON(S) and drop into it, nine times in ten they've already boxed the defenders into the spawn-outhouse with their High Speed Dynamic Esports Zerg and I get liquidated upon landing. Then I have to try respawning two or three different places to find the survivors and band up with them. Or sit and plink through the force field and wait haplessly for the base to flip and get farmed through the wall with high explosives. Yeah, man. That's DYNAMIC. Hell's bells.

In the old days you could drop anywhere outside a base's SOE as often as you pleased, subject only to cont locks and the 2:00 HART timer. Another proven game mechanic left by the roadside in the weeds.

EDIT: Come to think of it, what happened to Spheres Of Influence? I recall Higby talking about that in early beta, but nothing seems to have come of it. It isn't in the six month plan, either.

Originally Posted by Mox

His grace John "stubborn" Smedley announced several times that he hates sancs.

I honestly don't understand why that dumb grinning bastard still has a job, after the hash he made of SW:G. In the IT industry, you foul up a major software development project that way, you get ushered out the door. I guess the gaming industry is different.

I gave him the benefit of the doubt for awhile, but no longer. His greasy fingerprints are all over every bad design decision that's been made in this game -- including the appallingly early release. I find it impossible to believe that the devs were their own masters in that.

[Climhazzard]

Originally Posted by Dougnifico

What would be cool is a sanc that could be partially invaded (like a capital city with urban fighting) until an empire is backed into their safe zone.

"Attackable sanctuaries" was requested throughout the history of the original game. While I thought it was a neat idea, I came to the conclusion that it was pointless.

A faction's sanctuary (or their warp gate, currently) is their safe zone. If you've been pushed back that far, things are already desperate enough. If you're then going to cut that safe zone in half, you might as well just make the new safe zone the actual Sanctuary. Oh, but you want to increase the sense of desperation, so you cut that safe zone in half. It has to stop somewhere, and it should stop at the Sanctuary's "border".

Originally Posted by Rockit

I think a lot of it gets back to their comments early on about wanting to have every square inch of land contestable. Obviously sancs don't come anywhere close to being in that conversation.

Well, the current warp gates don't fit into that conversation, either, and for the same reason sanctuaries don't fit into that conversation. It's just not possible to have "every square inch of land contestable" unless you're willing to allow an entire faction to be essentially booted from the server.

[Rockit]

Originally Posted by Climhazzard

Well, the current warp gates don't fit into that conversation, either, and for the same reason sanctuaries don't fit into that conversation. It's just not possible to have "every square inch of land contestable" unless you're willing to allow an entire faction to be essentially booted from the server.

Well within reason. You need some sort of safe zone for organized ops to form up but when you are talking about having the designers spend time on a cont sized safe zone, that is what Smed and folks were referring to. Bring on the sancs!

[Chaff]

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Just becasue something was in PS1 - does not mean it is automatically required, or outdated.

I liked The Sanctuary. I miss VR. It would be a better way to test "new" weapons SOE wants to sell. If Sancs come back, make some improvements. In VR, it would be great if they had Empire Tactical Training. Outfits could suit up Squads to practice tactics against each other (your vet Outfit mates would play as enemy opposing empire(s).

Flight training (or at least Practice) was a no-brainer in VR. It would be even better, if we could pull armor, or air (in my case), and practice agaisnt AI from either (or both) opposing Empires. I'd much prefer to develop some flying skills against an AI opponent, than geting powned in 10 seconds in-game .... then wait 15 minutes to pull the same air vehicle .... and get quick-powned again. THAT is not a good way to learn to fly. Certainly ain't fun. It's also BS XP for air vets. Bring back Sancs with some fun improvements.

Instead of shooting stationary targets at the VR shooting range, let players suit up as any empire & train tactics & weapons functionality.
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[nurizeko]

Originally Posted by PredatorFour

They didn't want to add sancs because they said it slowed down gameplay. They said it took 5 mins to get into a fight. In the current system it would take a click on deploy to get into a fight. Soe just baffles me with their design decision making.

I can see how 5 minutes might seem like a long time for the ADHD CoD kiddies, but aside from the fact it didn't (you had plenty of means to get into battle quickly), the most memorable thing in Planetside other than the big memorable battles were the preparations for them.

When your outfit/faction is regrouping at sanc and pulling vehicles and waiting for a few minutes for everyone to get together and CR's to call out the target, it feels awesome.


I couldn't care for the hex system, it's proven itself to be flawed, by diluting fights. Why protect a base when you can just go somewhere else?

It's one of the big mistakes that SOE made with PS2.

The game isn't out of beta.

[Methonius]

If they do end up bringing in sanctuaries they should all have very unique building with unique architecture based on the faction that you're playing. This would make it much cooler than just placing some random boxed buildings all around.

Also they should make an event that if you cap their home cont on certain time periods it actually gives you the chance to attack the enemies sanctuary. I think they should have Empire Specific point defense turrets at Sanctuaries for this to be even more epic like the vanu having a giant all seeing eye tower that shoots a massive laser at anyone in its range and also give them wall turrets that shoot giant lasher orbs. NC should have giant artillery cannons within their sanc walls and Rail guns as their turrets. TR would have huge mortar launchers that explode tiny bomblets all over at any nearby enemies and have quad barrelled turrets lol.

[Babyfark McGeez]

So now the devs will tell us some more 2489 times sanctuaries won't be coming because they "are bad for the game" and "this is ps2", just to eventually realize it is a feature that is needed for various (countless times stated) reasons. And then they will add them.

So can't we just skip this whole crap this time and they implement them right away? We won't say "we told you so", i swear.
But this stubborn attitude to actively ignore completely logical and valid requests for no good reason (seriously, what's their point?) just to turn around 180° eventually because they re-discovered their common sense is getting tiresome.

[Qwan]

Originally Posted by robocpf1

I
As far as Planetside 1 goes:

1) Warpgates. Which you had to fly to, warp to the other continent, and then fly from that warpgate (almost always on the edge of the map) to the fighting. It did take some time to move Galaxies, AMSes, Lodestars, etc if the fighting was far from your warpgate.

Good point, its the same in PS2, you start at the warp gate (which is at the edge of the map) and you fly to were the fight is.

2) Instant Action. Hit Escape, click Instant Action, wait 10 seconds and it will spawn you at a hotspot. This was completely uncontrollable, and not a reliable method to get into a specific fight. It was more an "I want to shoot something" button that would spawn you somewhere enemies were.

Its the same with the instant action in PS2, sometimes when I use the hotspot button I end up in a totally different location then the one I clicked.

3) The HART shuttle. This is like the drop pod deploy button we have now, except you could drop anywhere on a contested continent except for inside a facilitiy's SOI. It did not come every 1-2 minutes - the timer was nearly 4 minutes long with a lengthy loading time to allow players to get into the shuttle. When you consider, for PS1, that towers can flip in a matter of 12 seconds and facilities took 15 minutes (or less, with an LLU), 5 minutes is a heck of a long time. If you take too long loading up your Galaxy, you may miss the opportunity because of the travel time. It was a problem, we just had 10 years to learn the best ways of dealing with it, and we sort of ignored it after a while because it was part of the game.

Your right about the HART, its been a while. Towers in PS2 flip just as easy as they did in PS1, take Tawrich tech plant, it has a small tower to the north, just stand next to the flip point and give it about 30 seconds and it flips. I never saw the hack and hold method as a problem, neither did SOE, because its still a hack and hold, the only thing that will determine the time is the influence and how persistant the enemy is, so a 15 minute hack and hold can be like a 1hour hack and hold if the enemy keeps taking B and C or A, and you have low influence.

PS1 had its issues just like PS2 does, and your right they had 10 years to learn from there mistakes. Now its like there not taking those lessons learned and there just making either the same mistakes, or making new mistakes, so it looks like another 10 years of learning all over again.

[Ruffdog]

Sanctuaries are so ten years ago...

Orbiting space citadels!


See - not a copy and paste

[Snipefrag]

Sancs need to come back. The whole 'it delays getting into battle' is bullshit. It takes longer to find a decent server for battlefield 3, wait in queue and then load the game than it would to push instant action on the map. The pro's FAR out weight the cons, heres a list weighing them up:

Advantages

1. immersion, instead of the cookie cutter sancs from PS1 you can really add depth to the game by making the Vanu one all techy and clever. The TR one very militaristic and the NC one a sort of ragtag mercenary cluster fuck of groups.
2. Adds continental warfare and a sensible meta game, ability to completely lock a continent at all times without any caveats like the ones proposed in the road map.
3. A place to put VR training.. This adds to immersion, if they implement this without it.. What will you do? hit a sodding button on a UI? cmon..
4. eSports area.. A physical place where you can go to take part in eSports, outfit tournaments etc.. Like WoW where you go to an area to queue up for a battleground in a captial city.. It looks like a battlefield, adds immersion !
5. global tactical center.. As someone mentioned earlier in this thread, could be a nice addition. Ability to plot battles and share details ingame with other commanders.
6. training areas, as someone else said in this thread. Its useful to be able to train for tower battles.. Maneuvers etc in a place where you arnt going to get blown up by a lib.
7. A place to form up raids that allows you to keep the destination hidden until the last moment. This gives commanders a new tool in their arsenal, surprise.
8. A place to put AFK people to take them off conts before logging them out (remember PS1 would put you there is you didnt pick a spawn point and it times out. ). Planetside.. Size matters, the size of the AFK group on the cont definitely matters at the moment !

Disadvantages

1. SLIGHTLY longer time to get into battle
2. If not explained properly it might confuse newbies (ingame tutorials should sort this out, a quick google and someone with half a brain cell can figure it out).
3. The possibility of being sanc locked, people dont like being sanc locked. This will force commanders to think sensibly and play tactically. Like in PS1 if someone was hacking your home conts and you ignored it to stay in the good fight on Hossin you would lose everything. If you fuck up your meta game or made bad/stupid decision you will be spending some time in sanc, deal with it.

Anyone got anymore to add to either point? Hopefully this is the sort of feedback that will convince the devs we need Sancs.

[Dougnifico]

Originally Posted by Climhazzard

"Attackable sanctuaries" was requested throughout the history of the original game. While I thought it was a neat idea, I came to the conclusion that it was pointless.

A faction's sanctuary (or their warp gate, currently) is their safe zone. If you've been pushed back that far, things are already desperate enough. If you're then going to cut that safe zone in half, you might as well just make the new safe zone the actual Sanctuary. Oh, but you want to increase the sense of desperation, so you cut that safe zone in half. It has to stop somewhere, and it should stop at the Sanctuary's "border".

Touche my friend. Touche...

As for space stations... +1

[Dkamanus]

Originally Posted by Qwan

Ive played with Azures Twighlight quite a bit on PS1, they used Sanc to work on tower missions and to show new troops the ropes. It can have its uses than just being a hang out area. Im just saying I think it would be an exellent addition to PS2.

I've been using some warpgate buildings in order to simulate a biolab gen room in order for people to understand how to invade it =x

Originally Posted by Rockit

Well within reason. You need some sort of safe zone for organized ops to form up but when you are talking about having the designers spend time on a cont sized safe zone, that is what Smed and folks were referring to. Bring on the sancs!

It doesn't have to be that big anyway. 1 km per 1 km is MORE then enough for the faction to start their pushes. We are not asking 16 per 16 km maps for the sanctuary, but for the metagame, there is no way around it besides sanctuary. Most people will love it, a few will hate it, but we aren't asking them to take any of the current options out, we want MORE options in.

They want to make this game function for 25 years, they better get some stuff from the older game, they worked.

[hashish]

There is so much that can be done with sanctuaries which can make this game 100x better..

I personally think devs are just being lazy :/ Also looks like a quite a big and thoughful process to correctly implement sanct's but imo its MUST BE DONE..

[Hamma]

I've not heard they are building sanctuaries.. so wherever the Luperza comment came from I haven't seen or heard it.

[Rockit]

Originally Posted by Hamma

I've not heard they are building sanctuaries.. so wherever the Luperza comment came from I haven't seen or heard it.

Well now don't be a party pooper. Although one thing for sure, sancs aren't on any 6 month plan I have seen. Probably gonna take more conts and then a substantial meta-game to make them more of a possibility but I wish they would hit the gas on things like this than MLG but I digress.